


Breathe, Please Just Breathe

by multifanwho



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Major character death but also kind of not because cpr happens
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 07:01:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16928652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/multifanwho/pseuds/multifanwho
Summary: The Doctor is following the rest of her team back to the TARDIS when she finds Yaz laying on the floor faced down. She doesn't know how it happened, but time is running out to fix it.Alternate ending to 11x10





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> it gets soft in chapter 2 but for now I present to you: pain.

The Doctor is running back to the safety of the TARDIS and her friends when she sees her. She sees her laying face down on the grey rocky ground. She shouts her name as her legs push her forward to help. 

“Yaz! Yaz can you hear me!” The Doctor says panicked, kneeling to shift her friends body so that her face was looking at her own, but her eyes were not open. The Doctor’s face became as drained of colour as the landscape around her. She knows that Tim Shaw could be right behind her any moment but not for the first time today she didn’t have time to move the scarily still body into the TARDIS. If that wasn’t bad enough she knew that the robot henchmen would be surrounding them any second as well. Hands shaking, she reached into her coat pocket for her sonic.

“Come on, come on, please…” She wished under her breath as she scanned Yaz laying on the floor. The sonic came back with the result she didn’t want. Not breathing. No heartbeat.

“No, not now, not Yaz.” The Doctor rolls up her coat sleeves and places her a hand on top of the other while positioning herself to hover over the younger woman. Jesus, she was so young, the Doctor couldn’t help but think. Her mind is racing as fast as her hearts were beating. She was trying to remember the pattern for human resuscitation. 30 chest compressions and 2 breaths she thought. She was willing to try anything. 

“One, two, three, four, five, six….” She counts aloud. 

“Oh my God Yaz!” The Doctor hears a young man shout coming from the direction she was running towards. At the time, she didn’t realise Ryan and Graham had come back, probably realising Yaz wasn’t right behind them.

“…27, 28, 29, 30.” The Doctor pinches Yaz’s nose and tilts her head back. She swears she hears Ryan tell her to check her airwaves but she already had all the information from the sonic so she ignores him.

“Doctor!” Tim Shaws voice bellowed across the communications system. Time wasn’t on their side.

The Doctor takes a second to steady her own breath before inhaling as much as she could to transfer into Yaz’s lungs. She repeats this but still no response from the body underneath her. The Doctor starts the cycle again.

“Breathe, please start breathing Yasmin Khan, please just breathe.” The Doctor begs through the lump stuck in her throat. 28, 29, 30. Two exhales of air go into Yaz. As the Doctor draws back to start pushing on her friends chest as hot salty tear lands on Yaz’s cheek, and the Doctor realises she’s starting to lose herself as well as her friend. She keeps on trying to simulate a heartbeat, she’ll break ribs if she has to.

“Ryan we have company.” Graham warns his grandson. The two take arms and shoot down the first few robots that trickle into eyesight. The Doctor starts to become frantic.

28, 29, 30.

She shakes the shoulders of the woman underneath her. “Yaz come on! You stupid human wake up!” she screams over the sounds of lasers shooting from left and right. If she doesn’t hurry up she’ll lose Ryan and Graham too. 

After one breath the Doctor can’t hold her composure any longer. She collapses onto Yaz, unable to hold up her own body as she was trembling with fear.

“Please!” She wails into Yaz’s face. Shaking and with tears running onto Yaz, the Doctor places her chin on Yaz’s shoulder while she grips her leather jacket until she can't feel her fingers. 

“Doc, we have to get moving.” Graham warns. The robots are coming in greater numbers now and the pair won’t be able to hold them off for much longer. The Doctor brings herself back to their surroundings and lifts her head. She uses her hand to wipe away a mixture of spit and snot and tears for Yaz’s neck. Then she feels it. She wasn’t being delusional, Yaz had a pulse. A faint pulse but a pulse none the less. Moving her hand to be a centimeter under her nose she feels a faint breathing pattern too. Although these were promising signs the Doctor didn’t let herself get too excited. Instead she lifted the unconscious body so she was holding it in her arms, stood up and started sprinting to the TARDIS as fast as she could, with Graham and Ryan following while holding the defence.

The Doctor kicked the door in and placed Yaz down as soon as there was enough room on the floor for her and the boys to get in and surpass them both. She tries one more round of chest compressions and to her upmost relief Yaz takes an intake of breath for herself.  
Laughing out of disbelief the Doctor rests her head on Yaz’s chest, just to make sure she can hear her heart beating how it should, and she finds it is. As she does, her laughing turns into sobs. She was alive. She saved her. The Doctor felt her hand, that was gripping onto Yaz’s waist, get very faintly stroked by Yaz’s thumb. Of course she’s still very weak. She picks up her friend again and swiftly takes her to her room, which the TARDIS had brought closer to the control room once she knew one of her passengers was hurt. After laying her down on her bed, the Doctor although hesitant to leave Yaz, ran back to Graham and Ryan.

“Are you alright Doc?” Graham asks softly.

“Yeah, I think I’m fine but we won’t be if toothface catches up to us and destroys the Earth, we should get back to stopping him.”

“Are you sure Doctor? Is Yaz alright? You sort of just took her without telling us.” Ryan asks concerned. 

“Yes she’s alive which is the most important thing. She’ll be fine in here while we sort out that lot out there.” The Doctor persists and the three of them set off without Yaz. Her fear, pain and upset had turned into anger. Tim Shaw wasn’t going to take away another one of their loved ones. Not today.


	2. Chapter 2

Yaz awakes from sleeping laying on her bed in the TARDIS. She doesn’t know how she got here but she’s glad to be laying on the softer surface. She tries to sit up but as she moves to do so there’s a sharp and painful shock in her chest. "Shit." she winces. It was like someone had dropped a boulder on her.

“Don’t try and move.” The Doctor speaks from above her.

“How did I get here?” Yaz asks with a weak voice.

“I carried you.” The Doctor says climbing to sit on the bed with her friend. Her very much alive friend.

“Oh crap, what happened.” Yaz groaned, still adjusting to her sore chest.

“I’m not sure yet, I just found you face down on the floor. You weren’t breathing and your heart...” The Doctor explained, unable to describe the full extent of the situation.

“Did you have to resuscitate me? Is that why my chest hurts so much?” The Doctor holds Yaz’s hand as she nods in response to her questions. Yaz squeezes it as if to say thank you and smiles at the woman who has saved her life so many times over.

“Are Graham and Ryan safe?” She asks not knowing how else to respond to this new information about her near death, or was it literal death.

“Yes, they're just grabbing some fish and chips. They saved both of us.”

“What do you mean?” Yaz frowns.

“I kind of lost it after about the third round of trying and there were those robot things so they were defending you and I.” The Doctor talks fast, even faster than usual to distract from her voice starting to shake because she was about to cry again. “You need water.” She grabs a glass of water with one hand and lifts Yaz’s head so she can take a proper amount and swallow it.

“Doctor.” Yaz says quietly and grabs hold the Doctors arm. The action and the amount of concern in Yaz’s voice alone tipped the Doctor over the edge and tears started to fall once more. “Doctor it’s okay, I’m here and you saved me.”

“But you had gone. For a moment you weren’t here and I had failed you.” The Doctor mutters.

“Come here.” Yaz tugs the Doctors arm with one hand and pats the space of bed beside her as an invitation to lay with her. The Doctor does as she’s instructed and lays on her side facing Yaz who is still laying on her back, too sore to move. Yaz pulls the Doctors arm so that it rests across her stomach and the Doctor gets pulled in to one of the most needed hugs she had ever desired.

“Do you still feel safe enough to travel with me?” The Doctor breaths onto Yaz’s neck while Yaz runs her hands through th Doctors soft blonde hair.

“Stay here with me for a few hours and I will.” Yaz says with the warm body next to her makes her eyes grow heavy. Yaz feels the Doctor also calming down as her breathing evens out. What on Earth (and multiple other planets) would she do without the Doctor. 

She wasn’t asleep for long, only twenty minutes or so according to her watch, but Yaz was awoken by the smell of greasy chips. She looks to her left and sees a white box on the bedside table with a note on top that read ‘Sweet dreams you two ; )’ in Ryan’s handwriting. She didn’t have the strength to reach over and she wouldn’t be able to eat properly anyway in her current position but Yaz appreciated the thought of getting them food.

She turns to her right and her chin brushes against the Doctors soft hair. Yaz smiles to herself. The Doctor looks like such a mess when she’s sleeping, but it was the perfect most beautiful mess. Yaz decides to brush a chunk of hair away from the Doctor’s nostrils, because she thought it would tickle, at least it does when her hair does that.

“Iloveyou.” The sleeping woman mumbles into Yaz’s shoulder, and Yaz thinks she might have stopped breathing again for the second time today. They weren’t the words she ever expected to hear come out of the Doctors mouth but there they were. Either she didn’t know Yaz was awake or she didn’t know she had just said it. A gentle snore confirms that she was still fast asleep and had no idea what had just slipped out of her mouth. Yaz starts to silently giggle but it hurt to do that so she just settles with a grin.

“I think I love you too, you impossible woman.” Yaz whispers, finally admitting what she had known for a while now. “I’ll never leave you again.” She breaths into the mass of blonde hair. 

Yaz lays there and listens to the Doctor sleeping peacefully, and the sounds gently drift her back to sleep again in the Doctors arms. She doesn’t know that the Doctor will soon wake up panicking that it was all a dream and she hadn’t managed to save Yaz, but Yaz didn’t need to wake up to reassure her, because finding herself wrapped around the brunette was enough in itself to make the Doctor calm down and fall back to sleep as quickly as she had woken up.

**Author's Note:**

> so season 12 isn't until 2020 huh


End file.
